What do you get when you combine a major 3DS system update loosely pegged for December with a lengthy session of system maintenance on the Nintendo Network? Speculation, that's what! Nintendo's network status pages for North America and Europe are showing aligned and extended maintenance scheduled for early next week. Mario needs time to prepare his tools for the job.

Of course, the fact that wider Nintendo Network performance isn't listed causes doubts, while the presence of the Wii and DSi platforms raises the possibility that this isn't a precursor to the promised 3DS update — that update, if you've forgotten, will include 3DS Nintendo Network ID support, shared eShop balances, and a Miiverse app for the portable.

But still, that's 11 hours of maintenance that will cause intermittent downtime, so we'd like to think that Nintendo will be doing something interesting. Feel free to speculate wildly in the comments below.

Welsh ex-pat Tom is responsible for the day-to-day running of the site. He's the guy to thank for the generally brilliant nature of the content which massages your eyeballs on a daily basis. Also has an unhealthy obsession with all things Bowser. ThomasBW84